Tag: wordpress comments plugin

While the major operating systems of Android and iOS have had varying levels of voice command for quite some time, many apps have lagged behind with only written and visual inputs and outputs. But little by little all of that seems set to change as an increasing number of apps go hands-free. Last month, Google Maps finally launched its long overdue voice feature. This is especially helpful for drivers who can now find gas stations or change their routes while they are driving without having to pull over to type, or even worse, type and drive. And according to research, you are 23 times more likely to have an accident while texting, and texting while driving accounts for over 1,600,000 accidents per year in the US alone. Hopefully, the increasing move towards hands-free voice technology will help to reduce these awful statistics.

Source: technewstoday.com

And it’s not just Google Maps that is changing the world with voice. Google’s Voice Access app allows users to completely control their phone with voice. Google has really jumped on the voice trend in a big way, and this technology, in particular, helps people with motor impairments navigate their touch screens. It still hasn’t officially released, so Google is still busy ironing out bugs, but it looks set to be a transformative technology for users who otherwise have difficulty manipulating touch screens and handheld devices.

And while Siri still runs the show on Apple, there are plenty of great Android alternatives out there. Voice assistants can really transform how you use your device, and once again, Google has a strong presence in this field with Google Now. It is reportedly one of the best voice assistants on the market and has a wide range of features and continuous updates from Google. Microsoft’s voice assistant is Cortana, another popular choice for Android users, which integrates well between PCs and handheld devices and can basically do anything a real assistant can do (ok, maybe not everything). And there are many more options out there.

All in all, voice technology is changing the way we do almost everything. In future, we may never even touch the devices we use, once everything is seamlessly activated across devices and platforms with easy-to-use voice commands. Voice activation is definitely the new wave of technology and has already been adopted and heavily invested in by all the tech giants. And, while voice accuracy is still never 100%, the stats are rapidly improving. In fact, Google, China-based Baidu, and startup Hound are already achieving around 90% accuracy. So if you haven’t started using voice, now is the time to transform the way you work and start to join the hands-free revolution.

Heyoya is a game-changing comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

For more information about Heyoya, or to start using Heyoya’s Receiver plan and start earning money today, click here.

From start to finish, the US presidential campaign lasts nearly two whole years (going from initial committees to presidential inauguration) and costs millions if not billions of dollars. According to estimates, Hillary’s campaign may be as costly as 2 billion dollars, while Trump has reportedly pledged to spend 2 million dollars per week. Overall, this may be the most expensive election to date with experts predicting a total cost of up to 5 billion dollars. And unlike other countries, there is no legislation regarding the length of official campaigns, which makes America’s presidential campaign one of the world’s absolute longest campaigns ever. But as we near the end of October, November 8th no longer seems so far away. And if you’ve been blogging about this election, then it’s been quite a marathon, but we are now just about ready for the final sprint.

Source: www.graphics.wsj.com

How to stand out in a presidential avalanche

It’s been a dramatic battle between Trump and Clinton, and the latest polls show Clinton holds an 11-point lead over Trump, quite likely as a result of Trump’s leaked tape and the sexual assault allegations against him. The media has been writing, posting, videoing and generally sharing non-stop content about these allegations, about Trump and about Clinton so that it almost feels there is nothing else going on in the world except these elections. And in terms of the content itself, as with all content, it ranges from shockingly low quality to Pulitzer prize worthy journalism. But with events such as this one, the big question for bloggers and content owners is how to make content stand out in an avalanche of presidential material.

Make your readers the center of the political debate

While there is no easy answer to make your content shine amongst the millions of other Hillary vs. Trump articles and blogs, there are a couple of things that can help increase your reach. For starters, your focus should be on generated a user debate and not just on generating your own content. Your content is the jumping off point, but the real action is in the talkbacks and comments from your users. And if that alone isn’t persuasive enough, research has shown that user generated-content is an extremely influential form of media that has more views, a higher click through rate and lower costs.

Give your users a voice (literally)

In the world of user-generated content (or UGC), there is tough competition. Pretty much every blog or website has a vibrant comments section, and social media allows for even more interaction. And according to some (quite scary) studies, 70% of readers don’t even bother reading anymore, they just read the title and skip straight to the comments. With such a strong focus on UGC, a great way to draw more attention to what you do is to improve the way your readers interact and comment on your content. And while comment platforms have been exclusively built for text and image based communication, there is now a new trend in voice comments. Giving your users a voice (quite literally) might just be the best way to make your election blog stand out.

Heyoya is a game-changing comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

For more information about Heyoya, or to start using Heyoya’s Receiver plan and start earning money today, click here.

You’ve probably heard the term “digital health” but what does it actually mean, and what is including within it? Essentially, digital health is a field that marks the convergence of the digital revolution with new health technologies, healthcare, the genomic revolution and more. It is transforming the field of medicine in terms of the way we diagnose and treat different illnesses. It is empowering individuals to better understand and care for their own health and lives in a multiplicity of ways including wearables, apps, the IoT and more. In 2015 a total of $4.5B was invested in digital health as the industry expanded massively across the globe. There were also 187 different M&A deals in this field in 2015 alone.

Source: storyofdigitalhealth.com

Within this rapidly growing field, there has been an interesting emergence of voice-based digital health solutions. In some instances, smart sensors and machine learning are coming together to help diagnose voice disorders. The use of non-invasive wearable technology can actually identify vocal polyps (a painful condition that often affects singers). And this is just an initial example of the application of machine learning and wearables. In the future, the same technologies could potentially help to diagnose a wide range of conditions.

But as well as voice helping to do the obvious in identifying specific voice disorders, the combination of voice and technology may also have wider applications in the field of healthcare. Cutting edge technologies are already able to analyze the emotions of speech, opening up the possibility of using voice-driven analytics as a new big data tool to help determine the likelihood of elections or the overall mood of a city or nation. But beyond this, there is evidence that simply analyzing your voice in the correct way can reveal stress, depression and other health issues.

While there is no miracle cure to “hearing” health issues in your voice, keeping track of the way you speak and how your daily speech compares to a baseline could identify multiple health conditions and apparently even tell you if you are suffering from heart disease. This is the kind of technology that could easily be adapted to handheld devices or incorporated into voice-activated personal assistants such as Siri.

And as well as empowering patients with apps and easy to use devices, voice-based digital healthcare is also helping clinicians reach a greater degree of accuracy and better care for their patients. Easy to use software can help clinicians to streamline clinical language understanding and clinical speech recognition. There are now a plethora of voice-based productivity apps that can help with coordination, patient care, diagnostics and more.

It looks like voice will play a critical role in the future of digital health care. With voice analytics helping diagnose disorders and voice-activated software helping health providers improve the way they work, the future looks to be increasingly wireless and voice-based. And in addition, the move towards voice and digital means the future of big data in the voice arena is set to be enormous. All in all, voice has arrived and is changing the way we care for our minds and our bodies.

Heyoya is a game-changing comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

It’s surprising how many time businesses in 2016 fail to bring together the correct components to build a comprehensive marketing strategy. The world today is still full of companies that build and fall in love with magical technologies without giving enough thought to how they will bring those technologies to customers. Similarly, there are still too many companies out there that see marketing as a potentially dispensable part of their business strategy to be added on only after the rest is done and dusted. So, what can you do to build the kind of marketing strategy needed to get your business to the top?

Bottom up research

The bottom line is, to be successful you cannot use the old philosophy, “if you build it they will come”, and in fact, marketing always needs to come first and foremost. The best businesses begin with bottom-up research (Professor Danny Warshay of Brown & Yale has a whole bunch of amazing talks on this). This means starting with your customers and really working to listen and understand their needs. This research is the number 1 step of any good marketers toolkit because you cannot proceed further without a base of knowledge and understanding. As well researching and speaking to your potential customers and understanding their behaviors, it is important to get a clear understanding of the industry you are entering, the current solutions and your competition.

Set reasonable goals

Are you psyched up after doing some wonderful research, have you built an in-depth understanding of your user base? Are you ready to charge into some marketing? Hold on just a second; it is time to step back and set some realistic goals. What are you actually aiming towards? What is a conservative estimate? What’s an optimistic estimate? It’s ok if you don’t meet each of your goals word for word in exactly the timeline you’ve set out, but it is important to have something to reach towards.

Find the right marketing mix

Once you have your research and goals in place, it is important to find the right marketing mix for your business. Sadly there are no simple answers here, so it is really a question of finding the tailor-made solution that works best for you. It might be that content campaigns are your best friend, or perhaps advertising banners on specific websites are the only real way to engage your target audience. Then again, maybe a few key strategic partners can get you more bang for your buck. There is probably no single channel that will meet all your goals, so the real question here is how to strike the right balance. Part of this will come through intuition and logic, but part will likely have some element of a trial and error.

Be flexible

Your customers and your industry will change over time. New competitors will enter the market and old ones will pivot or disappear. There are no static processes. You will need to keep your eye on the constant state of flux and quite possibly redo parts of your research or change your overall goals. At a certain point, you tried and tested marketing mix may no longer work as new technologies and ideas hit the market. In order to stay on top of things, you will need to stay agile and keep a close eye on industry changes. And don’t be afraid to try new tools and new technologies.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

If you have an online blog or website, you likely already have some sort of comments platform where readers can write their thoughts and opinions. But having a comments section somewhere down at the bottom of your blog is not enough. It’s time to leverage your comments section because it is actually one of the most important parts of your blog. Here are a few reasons why it’s so important and a few ideas for how to get the maximum from your readers.

Comments keep users on your blog for longer

There’s nothing like a few juicy comments to retain your reader’s attention and keep people on your site for longer. However good your blog is, if there is no debate around it, it is likely people who visit your site will simply leave once they’ve read the blog (or section of the blog) that interests them. An active comments section creates interest and means readers are more likely to convert and more likely to click related links to ads and content. A great way to make sure your comment section kicks off to a good start is to write the first comment yourself. Make sure that it is meaningful and more than just a handful of words. Alternatively, you can include a call to action at the bottom of your blog post. This can be something very simple, like asking your readers directly to write their opinions in your comment section.

Comments make things social

Having an active comments section where users frequently talk to each other is essential to creating a blog that is both dynamic and social. With enough activity on your blog, you also increase the backlinks to other websites and by doing so improve your SEO. So ultimately, comments help drive traffic to your blog and are therefore indispensable. If you are having trouble getting a conversation rolling and are stuck with a few isolated comments, you can start by replying to your user comments. The best approach is a simple one, so trying something personal and honest is a great start. A good approach might just be to thank them for commenting and ask a short question that relates to their comment.

There is a comment revolution in progress

If you’ve been on the internet any time recently you are probably all too familiar with a world of comments that is almost exclusively text-based. Ok, now and again a handful of emojis will appear, and of course, sometimes, entire comment streams will be based purely on memes (there are even entire wiki how’s explaining how best to use memes). But still, overall, comment platforms remain surprisingly traditional. However, things are finally starting to change and a number of comment widgets and platforms have recently appeared that go beyond text and venture into the worlds of images, videos, and even voice. A great way to truly leverage your comments section is to do something unique with it.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

When it comes to growing a business, a lot of attention and focus goes on acquiring new users and increasing user engagement. The truth is, one of the key areas where you can improve ROI is your conversion rate. However many people get to your website or online store, the big question is how many perform the actions or complete the goals needed to improve your bottom line. Sometimes the conversion rate refers to the completion of a product order, but it can also be something simpler like leaving a contact number, signing up to a mailing list or downloading a widget. Whatever conversion metric is key to your success; there are some great ways to optimize your conversion rates.

Why improve conversion rates?

So you might be thinking, why bother? You have a relatively low conversion rate but you are able to attract new visitors to your website through social media, content and advertising. That’s great news, but at the end of the day, improving your conversion rate is actually a lot more cost effective than gaining new visitors. High web traffic is good but if everyone is a single page visitor and you generally have a high bounce rate, then a greater number of visitors actually does nothing for your bottom line. On the flip side, improving your conversion rate involves finding the right kind of customers and making sure more of them stick around for the crucial moment of commitment where they go from “just another visitor” to someone who has bought into your website or product.

Source: wordstream.com

Improve your landing pages

To increase how engaged users are and to get them to make the first step towards that moment of commitment that increases your conversion rate, you need to make sure the first page they reach is excellent. If your landing pages are boring or unclear people will bounce right off them. So how can you make them amazing? First of all, make sure the content here is the best you have. If you have multiple web pages and limited resources, your landing pages should be getting a hefty share of attention and resources. They should be error free with some great advertising and marketing copy. It goes without saying that the UX should be seamless. However, it’s also important to make a clear call to action so users know what to do next. If it isn’t obvious through pop-ups and links (and whatever other tools) that they need to leave their email address or progress to their shopping cart than they won’t do it and you will lose valuable website visitors.

Create more engagement

Having great copy and beautiful visuals is great, but it isn’t enough to get your users to send you their details or commit to their first purchase. One of the best ways to get your users to stick around is to give them channels to engage. If your online store is conversational and interactive rather than static, it is highly likely people will stick around for longer. Having tailor made search results is one way to make your online store more personal. But having space for user reviews, interaction and opinions is an even better way of hearing from your customers. Reviews have been proven to increase conversion rates and are an invaluable tool for any online store. To make reviews even more personal and interactive, it’s possible to use voice-based platforms rather than the standard text-based review widgets. Voice is a great way to interact with your customers, hear their opinions, and share your thoughts and special offers.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

If you have a great blog and are looking for ways to gain more followers and increase your user engagement, look no further! Here are 4 helpful tools to improve the ways you promote your blog. These range from small and simple to longer and more complex, so take a look and see which ideas inspire you.

Go beyond the blog

It might sound trivial, but your blog isn’t just your blog. One of your major aims when marketing is to increase traffic to your blog and this means improving the channels outside the immediate radius of your blog and most recent posts. Social media is one of the big places to do this. Are you on Facebook? Great! Twitter? Cool. What about Snapchat? Do you have a Pinterest account? While you don’t need to go completely mad with social media you should take some time to think about the different social media channels that are out there. If you’ve been hooked exclusively on Instagram for the past year then it might be worth diversifying your social media portfolio. Just keep in mind your target audience when you do this and pick the channels that suit them best.

Harness the right resources

A blog doesn’t have to be a one-person show. To make your blog the best it can be you will likely need some help. It is important to figure out which resources can give you the biggest bang for your buck and figure out what you really need most. You might be all set for content and need a professional photographer to get the great shots to make your blog visually stunning. Or maybe you need a web designer to give the whole blog a big overhaul. It’s important to figure out your budget and your goals and to bring on board skilled people who can really help to transform what you do.

Keep track of things

When you start investing, bringing new people on board and switching up the ways that you do things, keep a close eye on the result. Figuring out the right recipe for your blog means keeping your eye on the ball. It could be that the banner ad you paid for in a popular marketplace is getting you nothing while the email retargeting campaign you sent out is reengaging readers you lost long ago. Figuring out cause and effect will let you hone in on the tools that work best for you. And don’t stress if something doesn’t work as well as you thought it would, part of the process is about experimenting and figuring out the right combination. There is no secret recipe for success.

Get interactive

Blogging about the things that make you cry, the things you really care about or the things that keep you up and night are good, but it isn’t enough. Make sure that you are bringing your readers into the conversation by allowing your blog to have an interactive aspect. This is the difference between giving a lecture when everyone shuts up and listens and having a meaningful and open discussion where everyone learns and contributes. The latter can be far more valuable so figure out the best ways to facilitate it. It might be as easy as adding survey software to your blog or simple asking your readers to message you or comment about their thoughts.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

With so many blogs, articles and websites out there, the question on everyone’s mind today is how can they stand out from the crowd. There are hundreds of being written every minute about UX and user-flow and mobile app interfaces and so on, but this article will aim to address what is at the heart of every UX – the content itself.

The first thing to note is that high-quality content takes time and effort to put together and there aren’t always shortcuts. However, whatever it is you are writing about or creating on your site or blog, there are some tried and tested tips to improve what you are doing and to help you really stand out. One quick way to improve your content is to take your time to fact check. Accuracy is extremely important, and chances are you will get called out if there is a glaring error, so make sure you fact check! Luckily this is an easier process than ever before with the digital world and a fast Google search at our fingertips.

There are some who say that less is more when it comes to content. Once (before search engines and rankings were as smart as they are today) content creators would aim to publish as much as humanly possible and do anything they could to increase the overall volume of their content. Most of the time this had a negative impact on the quality. And while this strategy may have worked in previous years, in today’s world, it is not just to search engines that are increasingly savvy; it is also the vast majority of readers. So it may be a good idea to focus on producing just a few high-quality pieces that really capture your audience. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t churning out content – the main thing is that you are really engaging people.

It is important to do your homework, and basically – to do some research. There is no point spitting out your vague opinion on a topic when there are likely already thousands of articles already out there on the very same topic. Have a look at what else is being written. Dig around the topic. Use some examples to illustrate what you are saying, and help make the story of your content stick in your readers heads long after they have left your site.

And finally, think beyond a blog. Perhaps your written content is at the center of what you do and what you publish. Perhaps you sleep, eat and breathe the texts and the words that make up the stories you write. Nonetheless, it is worth diversifying. It is so easy to add in vibrant images, great videos and even audio snippets. Mixing your content and providing more than just the written word, is a great way to keep your audiences engaged and increase the overall quality of your content.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

For more information about Heyoya, or to start using Heyoya’s Receiver plan and start earning money today, click here.

Unfortunately, apart from the bad reviews that are genuine complaints, there are many incidents of fraud, where companies have created bad reviews of their competitors just to make them look bad (there was a famous case where Samsung created bad reviews for HTC for example). And then there are often fake reviews, from annoyed or bored people who might not even be customers. In a climate in which it is so easy to fake an online presence, increasing measures are being taken to ensure the credibility and authenticity of online reviews.

Online reviews (provided they are authentic) provide a guaranteed stream of user generated content. This effectively translates into fresh and unique content for search engines, which dramatically improves search rankings for any business. This is a type of content that can really help differentiate products and services in search rankings. Reviews ultimately help to increase the breadth of language and content on a web page, driving more traffic to sites and especially long-tail traffic (ie. users with less conventional search terms).

While bad reviews might be negative, a few bad reviews have actually been shown to make websites appear more authentic. Just think of it – would you really believe there is a product or service out there with 100% positive reviews? It’s genuinely almost impossible to please all of the people all of the time, and a few bad reviews are nothing to be ashamed of. Having said that, it’s always important to react to reviews, to try and address the issues and to attempt to turn an angry customer into one that has received a high level of customer service.

In many ways, online reviews are a digital form of word of mouth. People trust other people who have first-hand experience much more than brands talking about their own strengths. And a word of mouth is as powerful as ever, accounting for 20-50% of all purchasing decisions. Today there is a wide range of online platforms that aim to facilitate this new form of digital word of mouth, but the majority of platforms are still relatively traditional text-based platforms or widgets.

Very recently there have been a number of new technologies, which use diverse media for reviews, and initial studies have shown that incorporating media other than text (so images, video and audio) can lead to an even greater positive response and higher conversion rates. Most websites remain stuck with traditional text-based reviews so this is actually a great way to differentiate an e-store while continuing to grow a trusted and trusting customer base.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase the quality of user-generated content while authenticating reviews and preventing spam and fraud.

For more information about Heyoya, or to start using Heyoya’s Receiver plan and start earning money today, click here.

Are you a website or e-store owner? Have you just completed the finishing touches on your incredible e-store, or written the latest brilliant article on current affairs? That’s great, but unfortunately, it doesn’t necessarily translate into higher user engagement. If you are creating content just for the pleasure of writing than who cares, BUT, if you are looking to increase conversion rates, improve user engagement and generally decrease bounces and increase web traffic, you need to do more than provide a great landing page.

There are no easy or miracle solutions to boosting user engagement, however, there are a lot of different strategies, tactics and technologies out there. The trick is to find the one or the mix, that works best for you and your site. But before you do any of that, it’s best to start with some data.

Do your research

In order to effectively engage your users, you should aim to find out as much about them and their habits as possible. You can do this by using your basic website analytics and gleaning as much info as possible. There are also a number of specialized analytics services and platforms that can help you analyze user data in greater depth. Each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses; for example, some are better with mobile analytics and some desktop, so it is worthwhile taking some time to look at the options and read up on what customers have to say.

Keep your users coming back for more

Many visitors will only ever come to your site once, and this is bad news when you are looking to increase engagement. So what can you do? One thing to keep in mind is the importance of first impressions. To keep users coming back, carefully think through the user experience of your site. Make sure you don’t overwhelm them with product descriptions or content so you can have them gradually engage while you provide more and more value over time.

It’s all well and good providing an excellent first impression and a great website experience, but sadly this won’t necessarily help much once users have logged off and forgotten all about the great article you just wrote. One way to keep them engaged is through retargeting campaigns, and this can be via email, web banners and more. It is vital to tap into your users’ actual interests though, because mindlessly sending website content or reminders to log in will just feel like spam. So once again, the focus should be on the value you can provide to readers or users.

Go beyond text

If you have a content site, you are probably focused primarily on the actual content of your site. Now, the text-based content itself is very important, but it is also important to utilize other mediums to keep audiences engaged and interested. For one thing, compelling or striking videos or images can go a long way. If you have an e-store, maybe you have already aced your product images, but you can still diversify the way you communicate with your customers. And a great way to do this could be to add some voice snippets or audio content to your site.

Heyoya is a unique comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.